I know many, many people who think that the universe looks designed.
There are 7 billion people in the world. One can find “many, many” people to believe all sorts of things, especially if one’s going to places devoted to gathering such people together.
But the stuff that are really created by conscious minds, there’s rarely a need to argue about them. When the remnants of Mycenae were discovered nobody (AFAIK) had to argue whether they were a natural geological formation or if someone built them. Nobody had to debate whether the Easter Island statues were designed or not.
The universe is either undesigned and undirected, or it’s very cleverly designed so as to look undesigned and undirected. And frankly, if the latter is the case, it’d be beyond our ability to manage to outwit such clever designers; in that hypothetical case to believe it was designed would be to coincidentally reach the right conclusion by making all the wrong turns just because a prankster decided to switch all the roadsigns around.
I can refer you to Ivy League scientists if you want.
There are many, many Ivy League scientists. Again beware confirmation bias, the selection of evidence towards a predetermined conclusion. Do you have statistics for the percentage of Ivy League scientists that say “the universe looks designed” vs the ones that say “the universe doesn’t look designed” ? That’d be more useful.
As an addendum to my above comment—if you personally feel that the universe looks designed, can you tell me how would it look in the counterfactual where you were observing a blatantly UNdesigned universe?
Here’s for example elements of a hypothetical blatantly designed world: Continents in the shape of animals or flowers. Mountains that are huge statues. Laws of conservation that don’t easily reduce to math (e.g. conservation of energy, momentum, etc) but rather to human concepts (conservation of hope, conservation of dramatic irony). Clouds that reshape themselves to amuse and entertain the people watching them.
I know many, many people who think that the universe looks designed. I can refer you to Ivy League scientists if you want.
There are 7 billion people in the world. One can find “many, many” people to believe all sorts of things, especially if one’s going to places devoted to gathering such people together.
But the stuff that are really created by conscious minds, there’s rarely a need to argue about them. When the remnants of Mycenae were discovered nobody (AFAIK) had to argue whether they were a natural geological formation or if someone built them. Nobody had to debate whether the Easter Island statues were designed or not.
The universe is either undesigned and undirected, or it’s very cleverly designed so as to look undesigned and undirected. And frankly, if the latter is the case, it’d be beyond our ability to manage to outwit such clever designers; in that hypothetical case to believe it was designed would be to coincidentally reach the right conclusion by making all the wrong turns just because a prankster decided to switch all the roadsigns around.
There are many, many Ivy League scientists. Again beware confirmation bias, the selection of evidence towards a predetermined conclusion. Do you have statistics for the percentage of Ivy League scientists that say “the universe looks designed” vs the ones that say “the universe doesn’t look designed” ? That’d be more useful.
Aaaand unfortunately we’re getting into personal opinion. It’s easy enough to find statistics about belief among top scientists, though.
As an addendum to my above comment—if you personally feel that the universe looks designed, can you tell me how would it look in the counterfactual where you were observing a blatantly UNdesigned universe?
Here’s for example elements of a hypothetical blatantly designed world: Continents in the shape of animals or flowers. Mountains that are huge statues. Laws of conservation that don’t easily reduce to math (e.g. conservation of energy, momentum, etc) but rather to human concepts (conservation of hope, conservation of dramatic irony). Clouds that reshape themselves to amuse and entertain the people watching them.